I noticed a few pea pods on my bushes that I had missed, now they are drying out and yellow. Can I harvest them once very dry and save as seed? Or best chuck them? Some are Kelvedon Wonder, others are Early onward.
I would save them and give them a go. :)
yep you can save them as seed for next year. my dad always saves a few each year
Make sure that you label them, they will be crosses and anything can happen..
Anything like what? Would it matter if they were crossed, could you still eat them?? ???
Yes but they might taste strange,weird like nothing you have tasted before .
LOL Good luck with them :)
No problem!! I save mine and have fantastic crops, I planted half with saved seed from last year and half from new bought ones and the home saved ones have done better. Leave them to dry completely so that the peas dry out hard like dried peas that you can buy in shops. You will develop your own strain of pea by doing this, if you select the biggest peas each time you will end up with a strain that will be more suited to your conditions, this is the way they always used to garden. Also save beans too.
Put them in the freezer and next time you do a stew or something that needs cooking for quite a while, chuck them in - they will be fine!
Of course you can save them. My staple is Gradus (an early main, growing to 4 or 5 feet) which is now fairly rare to find; I simply save the last of the season and that's my seed for next year. Haven't actually bought any Gradus for 5 or 6 years now.
Now I've published that on the internet, I dare say I'll be visited by the thought police in the middle of the night demanding that I hand over all illegal seeds!!
Quote from: allaboutliverpool on July 09, 2008, 11:14:30
Make sure that you label them, they will be crosses and anything can happen..
Peas are strong inbreeders, with perfect flowers. pollination normally occurs before the flower even opens. This makes them excellent for homesaving as accidental crosses are very unusual.
Though plants kept for seed will impact on yield considerably.
This is the advice on the Realseeds page:
Peas don't in general cross very easily, so you can save seed from several varieties without worry. Here is our 'Golden Sweet' harvest.
But be sure that you don't plant types with similar-coloured seeds next to each other, otherwise you'll not be sure which plant they come from!
The tricky bit is getting your pea plants picked when they are fairly dry - we hang ours on an indoor washing line if it's rainy!
Then just stomp the peas out of their pods.
I've got a bunch of varieties next to each other so I'm going to have to be a bit careful. Apart from that I don't anticipate any problems.
I'm saving all my purple podded peas this year as there were so few in the packet that to get a decent crop I need to have a lot more so for the next year or so I'm going to save them - that's the plan anyway :)
We have been saving several varieties of peas now for over a decade... non-commercial ones from HSL... ;D